Difference, Analogy & Inequality

Difference

• Difference exists and is literally true, in the world, between us and in us and will remain so until similarity prevails which, it is said in so many intellectual quarters, it once did and may do so again and, in the end, and until that temporal end is nigh difference exists and is literally true.
• Difference and similarity in this context appear as binary, as interlinked concepts, certainly not equal and are not strictly antonyms notwithstanding the fact that they implicitly carry some of these qualities and characteristics. 
• Difference exists only in the absence of similarity and similarity always exists and is literally true. Similarity is the universal entropic condition, the necessary condition of the universe in the moments before these words were written and this page took its now familiar shape and form. 

Relationship between Difference & Inequality

• The key question addressed in this essay is about the relationship between difference and inequality. Does a difference between two people mean that they are unequal in some way? It may appear self–evident that inequality is naturally occurring in human groups and populations and that such inequality is premised upon the differences that prevail between people and between groups of people and between entire races and religions. This essay is not a romantic delusion. This essay is clear that difference does not connote inequality except in so far as such inequalities are imposed upon differences by their socio relational context under circumstances. This is not to suggest that certain inequalities do not have temporary and passing functional value. This essay will set out to demonstrate that inequality is in fact an analogy and therein lays the difficulty or the conundrum. This essay establishes that difference is naturally occurring, and inequality is not except in so far as it is an analogy imposed upon difference by humankind and that humankind has become somewhat incautious and cavalier about such imposition and that inequality has lost its essential analogic character. This essay argues for the recovery of inequality as analogy and the dumping of inequality as a literal truth. Rawls peddled the very seductive idea of inequality as naturally occurring in human populations and many other authors have followed suit without questioning this assumption simply because it does appear self–evident. In that way we can reacquaint inequality with its full analogic dexterity and re-establish a fully recursive relationship between inequality and difference.  

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